Movie Accent Expert Breaks Down 31 Actors Playing Real People | WIRED

Dialect coach Erik Singer takes a look at idiolects, better known as the specific way one individual speaks. To best break down this concept, Erik analyzes some actors playing real people. Just how close was Jamie Foxx’s Ray Charles? What about Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Bob Dylan? Is Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln accurate?

I absolutely LOVE this sh*t! I could watch it all day long. Of course, I have a strange accent and maybe that's why I love listening to accents so much. Either way, if you love accents you should check out IDEA "International Dialects of English Archive" It's amazing!

I just don't hear it in Julia Childes / Meryl Streep. Meryl's gone for a pretty British accent and dropped some post vocallic r's, while Julia Childes has a clearly more american accent and clearly keeps them in. Meryl's GOOSE vowel is also, I think, far more forward than Julia's. Also the word "your" Is quite reduced in Julia's speech to /jɚ/ almost even /jɹ̩/ which Meryl isn't doing

I remember watching that scene of O.J. talking about how he would not commit the crime. Robert Kardashian questions his innocence. Must have been really really hard. I watched all of this for my criminal justice class, and we watched the last episode on Wednesday of this week.

I wonder how many misinformed viewers dismissed Daniel Day-Lewis' Abraham Lincoln accent for not sounding 'American' enough, and too 'English'. I think many imagine him having a voice of 'Murican triumph, and expected a brutal US force in a similar vein to Mel Gibson's Scottish "they'll never take our freedom" in Braveheart.

My accent would be an absolute nightmare for this man to analyze. I learnt english by watching movies/tv shows with subtitles in my first language and correlating what I read with what I heard. The result is a weird hybrid that sounds mostly british, but sometimes some american and aussie english slip through, and I'm sure my first language also causes some damage here and there.

His videos, are actually like a very good playlist of movies to see it in the near future (or at least assure myself I didn't miss any good one). Love the attention for details in all this good movies.